2. What, then, is the verdict of consciousness as to the existence of a permanent substance, an abiding existence which is the subject of all the varying phenomena? Of what are we really conscious when we say "I think," "I feel," "I will?" Are we simply conscious of thought, feeling, and volition, or of a self, a person, which thinks, feels, and wills? The man who honestly and unreservedly accepts the testimony of consciousness in all its integrity must answer at once, we have an immediate consciousness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of a personal self as passively or actively related to the phenomena. We are conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a power, producing the volition. We are conscious not merely of feeling, but of a being who is the subject of the feeling. We are conscious not simply of thought, but of a real entity that thinks. "It is clearly a flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of myself, but only of my sensations or volitions. Who, then, is that I that is conscious, and how can I be conscious of such states as mine?" [243]
[Footnote 243: ][ (return) ] Mansel, "Prolegomena Logica," p. 122, and note E, p. 281.
The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we have a direct, immediate cognition of self--I know myself as a distinctly existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer the earlier and later stages of consciousness, the past as well as the present feeling, and which I know abides the same under all phenomenal changes, constitutes my personal identity. It is this abiding self which unites the past and the present, and, from the present stretches onward to the future. We know self immediately, as existing, as in active operation, and as having permanence--or, in other words, as a "substance." This one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded as furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of substance, which is representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible qualities.
3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of consciousness as to the existence of the extra-mental world? Are we conscious of perceiving external objects immediately and in themselves, or only mediately through some vicarious image or representative idea to which we fictitiously ascribe an objective reality?
The answer of common sense is that we are immediately conscious, in perception, of an ego and a non-ego known together, and known in contrast to each other; we are conscious of a perceiving subject, and of an external reality, as the object perceived. [244] To state this doctrine of natural realism still more explicitly we add, that we are conscious of the immediate perception of certain essential attributes of matter objectively existing. Of these primary qualities, which are immediately perceived as real and objectively existing, we mention extension in space and resistance to muscular effort, with which is indissolubly associated the idea of externality. It is true that extension and resistance are only qualities, but it is equally true that they are qualities of something, and of something which is external to ourselves. Let any one attempt to conceive of extension without something which is extended, or of resistance apart from something which offers resistance, and he will be convinced that we can never know qualities without knowing substance, just as we can not know substance without knowing qualities. This, indeed, is admitted by Mr. Mill. [245] And if this be admitted, it must certainly be absurd to speak of substance as something "unknown." Substance is known just as much as quality is known, no less and no more.
[Footnote 244: ][ (return) ] Hamilton, "Lectures," vol. 1. p. 288.
[Footnote 245: ][ (return) ] "Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 6.
We remark, in conclusion, that if the testimony of consciousness is not accepted in all its integrity, we are necessarily involved in the Nihilism of Hume and Fichte; the phenomena of mind and matter are, on analysis, resolved into an absolute nothingness--"a play of phantasms in a void." [246]
(ii.) We turn, secondly, to the Materialistic School as represented by Aug. Comte.